Dear Conservatives: you don’t get to have it both ways!

You don’t get to have it both ways. You cannot, no matter who told you that you can, have your cake and eat it too! It’s not fair to those who don’t even have cake and the rest of us simply aren’t going to put up with it.

You cannot talk about the sanctity of marriage, but only your definition of marriage.

You cannot espouse the values of love and family, but only when it’s your definition of love and family.

You don’t get to preach to the rest of the world about the “evils” of birth control when clearly you and your wife only have two children. (Show me a conservative politician with less than 12 kids and I’ll show you a family using birth control!).

You can’t deny people access to birth control and then try to make abortion illegal.

You can’t make abortion illegal and then judge and condemn single mothers who are too young to be parents or who can’t afford to care for their children.

You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life,” to claim all life is valuable, but then refuse to approve any program that helps these very same children once they are born.

You can’t deny people a living wage and then complain when they don’t make enough money to live without assistance.

You don’t get to call yourself pro-life, pro-family and pro-child and then deny families desperately needed healthcare.

You don’t get to deny birth control, abortion, a living wage and healthcare, and then complain when families need help with medical expenses, food and housing for the children they had that they weren’t ready to have in the first place.

You don’t get to deny people programs to educate and retrain themselves so they can make a living wage and then complain when they can’t find jobs that support their families with all the children they have because they also can’t afford birth control, or abortion, or healthcare.

You don’t get to condemn single mothers or women in general, for not being able to pay their own way, but then deny them equal pay for equal work.

You don’t get to quote the bible verses that suit your needs and then dismiss the others as irrelevant and think the rest of us need to pay attention to any of it, (oh no, we don’t pay attention to that old testament stuff about slaves or not eating shellfish, but we quote the parts we think speak against homosexuality).

You don’t get to claim religious freedom, but only for YOUR religion.

You don’t get to wave the flag and pound the Constitution and shout about your freedoms, but then deny others their freedoms!

You don’t get to refuse to fund education, or pay teachers decent salaries, and then blame them when our children fall behind other countries in test scores.

You don’t get to continuously call for war, but then refuse to pay for Veteran’s benefits and healthcare.

Do you see the hypocrisy here? You aren’t going to be able to keep getting away with that! There really is enough cake for all of us and we aren’t going to continue to put up with this!

And here’s what the rest of us can’t do, those who believe in liberty and justice for ALL! We cannot assume the fight for gender equality and social justice is over. We cannot sit idly by and let the freedoms so many have fought for be chipped away at one piece at a time. We cannot assume there is nothing we can do about it, or that others will fight the fight for us. We don’t get to sit back and do nothing, refuse to vote, refuse to participate, and then complain when it all goes wrong!